Yesterday

Justin McCarthy's Dear Lady Disdain, the first of the Ann Arbor novéis, was published in 1875. Nearly a century has passcd since then, and Ann Arbor has been the setting for many additional works of fiction. Even though these books were not intended to serve as histories of the years they bridge, one can in readng them absorb some local color along with the plots. Locations, characters, and events are often based on actual aspects of Ann Arbor's past, although the town is sometimes disguised by another name. The literary quality of these works fluctuates widely, but our present interest in them is not based on aesthetic criteria. Nearly all are of valué to local historians for the ways in which they illuminate portioift of Ann Arbor's history. The novelist's eye and ear will often capture subtle details, revealing forgotten patterns of speech, thought, custom and dress which newspapers and other historical sources tend to ignore. With a few exceptions, Ann Arbor fiction means University of Michigan fiction. If the University did not exist, most of our local literature would never have been written. Many Ann Arbor novéis have been penned by students and alumni of the University. and autobiographical undercurrents are common. The list which follows is the first comprehensive bibliography on this subject to be published in twenty years, and it includes a number of older titles which were overlooked in earlier lists. Readers who know of others are invited to contact the writer at 312 S. División Street (761-4510), and their additions. if any, will be noted in a future issue. Copies of this list will also be made available at the Ann Arbor Public Library. Some of the books listed are in the Public Library collection. while others may be found in the University Library. A few titles are unavailable in Ann Arbor. DECODING THE LANDSCAPE Familiarity with the lively history of the University will greatly enhance a reader's appreciation of Ann Arbor fiction, who appears as Douglas Maxwell in The Road to Damascus (1907) by Hersila A. Mitchell Keays, and is also prominent in The Launching of a Man and The Road to the World. comic novel, Partly Cloudy and Cooler, by Elizabeth Uhr (1968), is a singularly unfunny, depressingly misanthropic story of life among grad students at the Universtiy. KID STUFF Ann Arbor's tradition of juvenile fiction is a long one, beginning with Financie in 1885. Helen Condon's State College (1938) is a breathless story of a coed's freshman year, pitched toward sub-teen girls. Also in the juvenile category are the football books of C. Paul Jackson, includmg Tournament Forward, All-Conference Tackle and Rose Bowl American (1949). A'fred Slote has recently been writing about Arborville kid baseball, and has three books out on the subject: Stranger on the Ball Club, Jake (1971), and The Biggest Victory (1972). Bess Tefft wrote two stories about rural life near Ann Arbor, Ken of Centennial Farm (1959) for boys, and Merrie Maple for girls. .The last Ann Arbor novel to make an appearance-albeit a brief one-was Hi Frosh! by Edgar S. Bacon. Published nj September, 1971, its coming was heralded in a couple of ads in the Michigan Daily. Wahr's Bookstore was the only local : outlet for the opus, with ten copies in stock. When all ten still remained on the shelf after a month, they were shipped back i to the New York publisher. The slim volume was overpriced at $4.95, and the ads didn't help any. "This delightfully wacky book," they declared, "depicts college life at the University of Michigan during prohibition days." WINf.S íplaiñiñgreTereñccoobscure events, üepartea taculty. mcmbers, and buildings which have been pulled down. Some authors wil] tease the reader by slightly altering the landscape of reality, the fun lies in cracking the "code". Kent Sagendorph's Michigan: The Story of the University (1948) is an entertaining introduction to the subject, and Howard Peckham's The Making of the University of Michigan (1967) gives a recent, comprehensive overview. Dear Lady Disdain (1875) has already been described in this column; so has SOLA's (San'Louie Anderson's) novel ! about the first women at the University, An American Girl and Her Four Years in a Boys' College (1878), and Cornelia Corselius' collection of children's stories. Financie (1885). Another short story collection. Karl Edwin Harriman's Ann Arbor Tales, was published in 1902. The youth's quest for identity and the meaning of life is a frequent theme in college fiction, treated here in Stanley Waterloó's The Launching of a Man. by Herbert Gold (1959). Another "search" novel is William Hume Stockwell's Rudderless, A University Chronicle (1930), penned in defense of the controversial admimstration ot university President I Clarence Cook Little (1925-29), and published under the pseudonym W. Stock Hume. The year before Rudderless appeared, ex-President Little had been libeled in Janel Hoyt's Wings of Wax. a poison-pen attack actually written by the disaffected Jean Hamilton, former Dean of Women. Thomas Dixon's Leopard's Spots is also said to deal with Little's career. The plots of several novéis involve the University Medical School. Most of the action in Theophil Stanger's Mr. Pickett I of Detroit (1916) takes place elsewhere, but the young hero performs an operation in the oíd hospital on Catherine Street. Lloyd C. Douglas, former pastor of Ann Arbor's First I Congregational Church, drew inspiration from the Medical I School for some scènes in Magnificent Obsession (1929) and a I follow-up work. Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal (1939). I Douglas' Disputed Passage (1938) is another doctor book with I an Ann Arbor locale, as is Louis J. Gariepy's Saw-ge-mah [Medicine Man], published in 1950. According to Esther I Rainville, Miss Susie Schlagle's, by August Tucker, I described life in an Ann Arbor rooming and boarding house I catering to medical students. In writing Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis modeled some of his I characterizations of physicians on notes supplied by Paul IdeKruif; one character is said to resemble clearly Dr. Frederick G. Novy of the U-M faculty. Another towering I facultv figure was Philosophy Professor Kobert M. Wenley, WWïBBHBIillili Stories about Nazi plots at the University were exciting reading during World War U, when SHADOW ON THE CAMPUS was published. NAZI'S ON THE CAMPUS Ann Arbor scènes may be found also in A Sweep of Dusk, by Wiliiam Kehoe (1945) and Denham Proper, by Alfred Slote (1953). Peggy Goodin's Take Careof My Little GirI ( 1950) is a satirical put-down of the sorority system. Also billed as a Hideous Nazi plots, aimed at subversión of the University, erop up in Shadow on the Capus (1942) by Donal Hamilton Haines and The Dark Tunnel (1944) by Kenneth Millar. Haines was a member of the Jouralism faculty. Millar, who was a teaching fellow when he wrote his book, is better known today as Ross Macdonald, author of the Lew Archer series of "hardboiled" detective novéis. His wife, Margaret Millar, also wrote a mystery with an Ann Arbor setting, Vanish in an Instant. Unrepentant Nazis return to the campus in the 1960's in Out of Shape (1969), by the late Leonard Greenbaum, an entertaining narrative full of oblique references to recent episodes in local history. I Smell the Devil by Carey Magoon (1943) is a brisk account of a murder in the Rare Book Room of the University Library, and its solution by a pair of middle-aged doctoral candidates-turned-detectives. Carey Magoon is the pen name of the tw.o authers, Elisabeth Carey and Marian W. Magoon. Murder is the subject also in Alian Seager's Amos Berry (1953), and Bradford's Trials (1969), by James R. Beek, is a wooden and tedious retelling of Attorney Beek's successful defense of a local industrialist who was accused of soliciting the murder of a circuit judge. Young marriage is the theme of at least four novéis. Not Quite a Dream (1948) by Kathleen Hughes details the pitfalls of an inter-faith courtship. The Cautious Husband (1949) by Virginia Evans is set, in part, in the post-war student housing colony at Willow Village. Richard L. Tobin's The Center of the World (1951) has a number of Ann Arbor flashbacks, and Betty Smith's Joy in the Morning (1963) describes her experiences as a young bride and mother in the 1920's, living in the cramped caretaker's cottage on Wines Field. The market for wackiness was apparently already saturated I in 1971, but works of Ann Arbor fiction are likely to keep I turning up despite this example of failure. As long as the I University exists, budding authors will draw on its scènes for I inspiration. After a hundred years, the field remains wide open, and who can say but that the Great Ann Arbor Novel may yet be written bef ore another century slips by?